FreakinDJ
FreakinDJ's JournalAfter Receiving Bailout, GM May Move Volt Production to China
What else was included in this deal? GM has agreed to effectively move all future EV development to China. It could also mean that production of the vehicle itself will be moved overseas.
The agreement is the result of the Chinese government coercing foreign automakers into giving Chinese companies the EV technology they lack, according to an Associated Press report. Unsurprisingly, some U.S. lawmakers have voiced concerns that the deal is little more than a shake down from the Chinese to get GMs Volt secrets. GM has denied reports that it will hand over the intellectual property underlying the Volt.
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/UzMw0i.77xXTzcQj.Kphjg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTMxMA--/
http://news.yahoo.com/receiving-bailout-gm-may-move-volt-production-china-020507979.html
More to the story here -
As General Motors seeks to introduce the Chevrolet Volt to the Chinese market, it's counting on these subsidies to help make the car attractive to potential buyers. It could work, too, since the Chinese subsidies are large enough to essentially slice the Volt's MSRP in half. However, according to The New York Times, the Chinese government has put a big roadblock in front of the plug-in Chevy:
The Chinese government is refusing to let the Volt qualify for subsidies totaling up to $19,300 a car unless G.M. agrees to transfer the engineering secrets for one of the Volt's three main technologies to a joint venture in China with a Chinese automaker, G.M. officials said. Some international trade experts said China would risk violating World Trade Organization rules if it imposed that requirement.
http://green.autoblog.com/2011/09/20/china-to-gm-give-us-chevy-volt-secrets-or-itll-cost-19-000-mo/
Natural gas glut fuels export debate
Debate is brewing over whether to keep the nation's glut of natural gas at home for cheap energy or export it at five times the price, possibly creating jobs and boosting the domestic economy.
Businesses that purchase natural gas for industrial and residential use have rallied against proposals to liquefy and export the fossil fuel to Asian and European nations willing to pay much higher prices.
Nine companies have sought federal approval to export about 10 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per day, which would boost prices for U.S. customers.
Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass LNG plant in Louisiana already has won approval to ship out more than 2 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day.
http://www.chron.com/business/article/Natural-gas-glut-fuels-export-debate-2519787.php
Glad to know we will get some thing out of all the pollution in our water
Why is there Business Tax Dedutions for Compensation in excess of $1Million
Our whole tax system is based on a "Progressive Tax" yet Washington fails to acknowledge excessive Executive Compensation is a determent to businesses and the economy
Romney's Bain made millions as S.C. steelmaker went bankrupt
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. Boston-based Bain Capital LLC more than doubled its money on GS Industries Inc. the former parent company of Georgetown Steel under Mitt Romney's leadership in the 1990s, even as the steel manufacturer went on to cut more than 1,750 jobs, shuttered a division that had been around for 100 years and eventually sank into bankruptcy.
Bain Capital spent $24.5 million to acquire GS Industries in 1993, according to an investment prospectus for the company that was obtained by the Los Angeles Times and reviewed by McClatchy Newspapers. By the end of that decade, Bain Capital estimated its partners had made $58.4 million off its investment in GS Industries, according to the prospectus.
Bain Capital's partners also earned multimillion-dollar dividends from GS Industries and annual management fees of about $900,000. But by the time GS Industries filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, it owed $553.9 million in debts against assets valued at $395.2 million.
Romney - who founded Bain Capital, one of the earliest leveraged-buyout firms, in 1984 - was in charge of the firm for most of the time it owned GS Industries. Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, two years before the bankruptcy, to run the organizing committee for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/14/135889/romneys-bain-made-millions-as.html#storylink=cpy
SOPA is the 1%'s Hostile Take Over of the Internet
This is now posted on Craig's List
Congress needs to hear from you, or these dangerous bills will pass - they have tremendous lobbying dollars behind them, from large corporations reportedly hoping to prop up outdated, anti-consumer business models at the expense of the very fabric of the Internet -- recklessly unleashing a tsunami of take-down notices and litigation, and a Pandora's jar of "chilling effects" and other unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequences.
Please let your Members of Congress know you OPPOSE H.R. 3621 "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) and S. 968 "Protect IP Act" (PIPA):
Phone, yes phone your Member of Congress! (House) (Senate)
EFF Congressional Emailer - Oppose Internet Blacklisting (SOPA & PIPA)
OpenCongress Congressional Emailer - Oppose SOPA
Generic Congressional Emailer (You'll need your Zip+4)
Learn more about SOPA, Protect IP (PIPA), and Internet Blacklisting:
Growing Chorus of Opposition to SOPA
Open Letter against SOPA from 83 Prominent Internet Engineers
Why SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) are Bad, Bad Ideas (Techdirt)
SOPA News (Google News)
SOPA Wikipedia entry
SOPA FAQ (CNET)
Internet Giants Consider Blackout Against SOPA!
Where does your Member of Congress stand on SOPA? (Project SOPA Opera)
Opponents of SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)
Supporters of SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corporation, VISA, Mastercard, Pfizer, Comcast, Time Warner, ABC, Nike, Walmart, Dow Chemical, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)
http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA
Looks like we might have a value missing here
Got this on the front page here at DU
Making It in America
I first met Madelyn Maddie Parlier in the clean room of Standard Motor Products fuel-injector assembly line in Greenville, South Carolina. Like everyone else, she was wearing a blue lab coat and a hairnet. Shes so small that she seemed swallowed up by all the protective gear.
Tony Scalzitti, the plant manager, was giving me the grand tour, explaining how bits of metal move through a series of machines to become precision fuel injectors. Maddie, hunched forward and moving quickly from one machine to another, almost bumped into us, then shifted left and darted away. Tony, in passing, said, Shes new. Shes one of our most promising Level 1s.
Later, I sat down with Maddie in a quiet factory office where nobody needs to wear protective gear. Without the hairnet and lab coat, she is a pretty, intense woman, 22 years old, with bright blue eyes that seemed to bore into me as she talked, as fast as she could, about her life. She told me how much she likes her job, because she hates to sit still and theres always something going on in the factory. She enjoys learning, she said, and shes learned how to run a lot of the different machines. At one point, she looked around the office and said shed really like to work there one day, helping to design parts rather than stamping them out. She said shes noticed that robotic arms and other machines seem to keep replacing people on the factory floor, and shes worried that this could happen to her. She told me she wants to go back to schoolas her parents and grandparents keep telling her to dobut she is a single mother, and she cant leave her two kids alone at night while she takes classes
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/?single_page=true
Great article about WHY we need technical alternatives to the 4 year degree
What kind of capitalist is Romney?
In a presidential primary season distinguished so far by the absence of substantive debates, the controversy over whether Mitt Romney and his partners at Bain Capital should be considered job creators or job destroyers raises a profoundly important issue.
Beyond the concerns about the loss of American jobs to off-shoring or automation and the food-fight tactics of Romney's rivals is a legitimate question about what kind of capitalism 21st century Americans should want.
The choice is between "stakeholder capitalism" and "shareholder capitalism." According to the theory of stakeholder capitalism, corporations are and should be quasi-public entities with responsibilities to the nation-state and to the communities in which they are embedded. The corporation should make a profit and provide a fair return to investors. At the same time, workers who contribute their labor to the company have a legitimate interest in it as well as investors who provide capital. Managers serve the company and the country, not merely the investors.
<snip>
From the perspective of shareholder theory, private equity firms like Romney's are promoting efficiency, even as they make short-term profits by dismantling or destroying companies and laying off their workers.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/opinion/lind-romney-bain/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Well worth the read - and certainly worth a "Recommend" on FB
ATTENTION America – this is the New Economy – Get Used to It
Who says things are going to get better? Just what political pressure resides out there in the American Landscape to force the American Government to wrest control of the economy from the Wealthy Elitist Corporations that have placed a strangle-hold upon the throats of the Working Class?
Some New Special Tax on Vulture Capitolism?
As economic forecast pop up on the horizon daily in our media they all have one thing in common. They produce a pretty bleak picture for the Working Class many years to come, possibly a decade away. Quite a lot can happen in that time frame and more then likely it will be at the hands of Corporate controlled economy and Washington insiders. Regretfully there is just too many future earnings to be made picking the bones of the once proud American Middle Class.
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